Uncertain Country : The Wingate Letters: San Francisco, California - Meriden, New Hampshire, 1851-1854

This selection of letters provides us with a marvelous and rare insight into the emotional and radically different life experiences of a father and a family separated by the Gold Rush. The Bancroft Library's collection of more than 200 Wingate Family letters (BANC MSS 83/35c) was provided through generous gifts in 1984 and 1985 by the Wingates' great-granddaughter, Margaret E. Thompson. The entire group is one of the few known Gold Rush examples in which a complete circle of correspondence between the East and West has been preserved. Benjamin, who arrived in San Francisco in September 1850, and Mary, who stayed with their five children (Charles, Albert, Emily, Lucy, and Ella) in Meriden, New Hampshire, exchanges letters in almost precise two-week intervals....

The letters provide us with an intimate and moving consciousness of a family bonded over an immense distance by the act and love of writing. The family life in New Hampshire juxtaposed with the one Benjamin finds in California gives the reader an almost Kaleidoscopic view of an American continent much at odds with itself.